


Downpour

by gnimaerd



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 14:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5543492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fill for <a href="http://thescavengerandthestormtrooper.tumblr.com/">thescavengerandthestormtrooper</a>‘s secret santa fic exchange, for <a href="http://lilshortstackt.tumblr.com/">lilshortstackt</a>, who requested:<i> Rey and Finn playing in the rain for the first time together</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Downpour

Twelve hours into Rey’s stay on D’Qar the heavens open and the storm that has been lingering like a headache finally breaks across the back of the sky.

There are Resistance fighters taking shelter from the sudden downpour under X-wings or hurrying back indoors, who, for weeks after, tell the story of how that Rey kid stopped still like a stone and just stood there in the middle of the landing field like a damn ewok waiting to get hit over the head.

Stood there staring at the grey sky like she’d never seen rain before.

Some of them swear up and down that she stood there and laughed still she couldn’t stand straight anymore – there are a couple others who insist she was crying.

It’s fitting, the storm. Leia listens to the thunder, the rain driven hard against trees and ships and windows by gusting wind, and feels a degree of grim satisfaction. At last something that isn’t obnoxious sunshine, something to match her mood. (Han would roll his eyes at her, tell her she was being melodramatic. Like the heavens would open for him, of all people).

Then she watches Rey trail in, soaked through.

“Rey?”

“Rain,” Rey looks feverish, wide-eyed, _“rain_.”

“Yes, it happens rather regularly around here,” Leia lofts a gentle eyebrow.

Rey nods, swallows.

“Do you need a change of clothes?” Leia offers, aware, abruptly, that the poor girl won’t have anything else to wear.

Rey glances down at herself, as if she’s only just registering how wet she is. “I – um, not yet.”

Then she turns and heads toward the medical bay. (Of course. The medics have apparently barely peeled Rey away from Finn since getting him stable. Leia has quietly ordered C3PO to make sure Rey is left alone – too many people have been separated from the loved ones this week. Finn and Rey have no one else. They can stay together as long as they want).

“Finn,” Alone in the medical bay, Rey touches his cheek with wet fingers. “Finn, come on. Wake up.”

His eyes flutter and he mumbles something unintelligible, flinching away from her hand.

“Finn,” Rey persists.

He blinks for a moment, gaze focusing on her face. “…Rey?”

“Finn, it’s raining,” Rey grasps his hand, “raining. _Really raining_.”

“Mm,” Finn considers this for a moment, through the haze of some really outstanding drugs and a distant, dull pain in his back and shoulder. “It does that.”

“I can’t remember,” Rey tells him, and he registers that she’s shaking, her eyes wide, “when I last saw rain. It looks – it’s amazing.”

Oh – right. Finn tries to nod, though it immediately makes his vision swim. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Rey’s tongue darts out, catches the moisture on her upper lip. “Come on, do you wanna see?”

Finn manages a hollow, half-laugh, closing his eyes. “I… am so not getting off this bed.”

“I’ll carry you.”

He’d laugh harder, but the last time he did that it hurt really, really badly (he blames Poe Dameron for trying too hard to cheer him up). Rey’s a half head shorter than him and he’s literally incapable of walking right now – this is so not happening. A few hours ago those outstanding drugs made it seem like a good idea to try to walk to the bathroom by himself. The outstanding drugs are lying liars. “Rey, no.”

“I can do it,” she tells him, insistently. “Come on.”

“I know what rain looks like, Rey.”

“No, but you’ve never seen it like this,” she leans over him, and he sees the moisture on her eyelashes and isn’t totally convinced those are raindrops, “I promise. I’ll help you.”

She smiles, quick and hopeful, and Finn blinks up at her, watches the moisture gather at her hair line, glisten and then drop free – feels water droplets landing on his forehead, feels her damp skin where she’s still holding his hand. He doesn’t mind her holding his hand, not at all. She can do that as much as she likes.

“Okay,” he mumbles. “But I can’t stand for shit. They got me on something.”

“I can keep you upright, don’t worry,” she’s already sliding a sturdy arm beneath his shoulders, tentatively levering him into a sitting position. “Does that hurt?”

“No,” Finn feels wobbly, like his insides got filled up with bog mud, but though he knows where the pain should be, it’s in some disconnected part of his mind where he can’t really feel it; not yet. “mm’okay.”

She grasps one of his arms, pulls it over her own shoulders and then the world goes dizzy as he’s pulled round and then – wooow he’s almost all the way upright, sliding off the bed and sagging against her. But she’s right, she can carry him.

He shouldn’t be that surprised, he supposes – a lifetime hauling salvage on Jakku has left Rey sturdy, tough, her form slight, yes, but muscular, wirey, athletic. She’s not quite got the smooth gate and warrior’s stride of a stormtrooper, but it feels like she’s got the physical strength of a small bantha packed in under her skin.

Finn concentrates on getting his feet – which feel unusually far away from his head today – to move in some semblance of forward.

“Just to the window,” Rey promises, manoeuvring him clumsily around a chair, “I’ll open it up and you can look.”

“Okay,” he replies, because it’s a little late to start objecting.

The abrupt, wet gasp of air is the first he knows that the window is open – Rey props him against a little table and he has to close his eyes so he doesn’t get so dizzy he falls over. She grabs his arm again to steady him and manoevers him closer and suddenly – yeah, nope there is definitely water falling on his face.

“Look at it!” Rey points, excitedly. “It’s amazing – Finn – Finn, you have to actually open your eyes –”

He groans, but opens them. And yep, that’s rain alright.

Rey’s still trembling.

“Isn’t it – I mean,” she swallows, hard. “I’ve never seen it like that. It’s so beautiful. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yeah,” Finn isn’t looking at the rain. “Yeah, it is.”

Rey glances at him then huffs, exasperated. “You’re not looking.”

“I’m looking.” He shakes his head then immediately regrets it when the world goes blurry again.

Rey grabs his shoulders, then lets him sink into a chair, resting his head against her arm, her other arm on the window sill as she reaches for a stream of water running down where a piece of guttering must be broken overhead.

“It’s beautiful,” she insists, again, quieter, more wondering. “Water just – falls from the sky here. Everything grows, everyone drinks. No one has to hoard it.”

She draws her extended hand back inside and passes it, wet, over her face. Finn is watching the way her eyelashes have clumped together, her hair slicked back, her breath still coming in excitable hitches – she looks way younger than she is, all of a sudden; and much older, somehow, too.

Finn has known a lot of things in his life but deprivation of life’s basic necessities has never been one of them. He’s never had to think about what it must be like to exist from meal to meal, drink to drink. He watches Rey’s fascination – her easy pleasure, her awe – and if he were steadier on his damn feet he’d get up and hug her, hold her tight, promise to keep her safe for the rest of her life; promise she’d never have to be amazed by rain ever again.

(Not that she’d let him. But he’d offer.)

“I used to have dreams like this,” Rey tells him, quietly, biting her lip. “Am I being ridiculous?”

“No,” Finn replies, firmly. “Let’s go out in it.”

“You can barely stand,” she points out, with a quick, disbelieving grin.

“You can carry me.”

Leia finds them sitting in the landing strip – because Finn can’t stand and Rey has half-dragged him most of the way outside, giggling too hard to really support his weight. She finds them because two medics are loudly complaining about the possible complications to Finn’s recovery by this inexplicable soujorn, and four pilots are making known the distinct possibility that they’ll get mown down by incoming traffic any minute.

But Rey is rubbing her fingers in the mud like a child, painting her face with a nose and whiskers, and Finn is trying to explain the process of cloud forming to her (apparently The First Order is better on geographical education than anyone on Jakku was), and Leia is gripped with the strong urge to let them be. They’re so young and war – for war is undeniably upon them now – will not let them remain so for long; it has already robbed them both of their childhoods.

She thinks, unbidden, of Luke and Han and a snowball fight on Hoth that turned half the base upside down on one particular day many years ago. She thinks, for a moment, of all those lost childhoods reclaimed only in snatches, in moments, in snowball fights and brief, fumbling kisses and half hour excursions off-base – that sense of always having to steal time for happiness and tuck such moments away as defence against the inevitable hardships to come.

She thinks of all the time she should have stolen more of – times she should have asked Han to stay with her.

She might grant Finn and Rey a while longer to sit in the rain together if that’s what they’re so intent on doing.

“I’ll bring them an umbrella,” Poe Dameron offers, implacable as always, at her elbow, “and warn them to duck when the next bird comes in.”

“That’d be useful,” Leia pats his arm, “try to get them inside in half an hour or so, will you?”

“Promise.”

On the landing strip, Rey giggles, warm and bright, and wraps her arms around Finn, and begins to sing something loudly in a guttural language that sounds suspiciously like Uthuthma. Finn is gazing at her like she’s rainbows and sunshine incarnate in the pouring rain, and when Rey notices she flushes pink, and demands that he explain clouds again, to distract them both.


End file.
